Monday, February 27, 2017

What goes around, comes around? To everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season? A wild game of Twister? This post will have us consider three different sorts of spin -- none, I hasten to add, of the political variety -- but nary a one of today's topics comes from that teaser intro. And every spin to follow is apropos of this blog.

Well? Are you intrigued?

Down a quantum rabbit hole?

To begin, consider the quite limited -- one is tempted to say, "toy" -- nature of the few implementations to date of quantum computers. A key obstacle: finding a way to build qubits that won't be exquisitely prone (as approaches heretofore tried have been) to decoherence. (Decoherence is any process by which a quantum storage or computing element lapses from a state of superposition into a particular -- and hence, classical -- bit.) In plain English, qubits have been fragile.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

At sufficiently high pressure, hydrogen liquefies starting at about 33 Kelvin.(*) That's cold. At about 14 Kelvin and yet more pressure, hydrogen will become a solid. And, it has been theorized since 1935, under enough pressure solid hydrogen can take metallic form.

(*) For mysterious reasons, absolute temperatures are shown in units of Kelvin, and not (as every other temperature scale would suggest) degrees Kelvin.

Monday, February 13, 2017

SF writers enjoy wreaking (fictitious!) mass destruction, and I'm no exception. In Dark Secret, for example, I pretty much sterilized the solar system with a gamma ray burst. (That's not a spoiler ... you find this out early in the novel. The story is all about what comes after the discovery of that imminent danger.)(*)

(*) I know what you're thinking: gamma rays travel at light speed -- because they are (high-frequency) light. If the arrival of gamma rays is the first you know about a GRB in the galactic neighborhood? Well, you're toast. That said, one of the mechanisms that can produce a GRB emits "I'm going to blow" indications before the actual blast (warnings which you won't detect without a gravitational-wave observatory, such as, but more sensitive than, LIGO).

How else, at a global or grander level, might things go Really Bad? I haven't done a death-by-asteroid novel (yet), but rocks from the sky are popular among my peers. (Though not so much with dinosaurs. Just sayin'.) A recent study suggests that asteroids may pose a bigger risk to us homo saps than formerly supposed. See "Fresh craters point to constant 'churning' of moon's surface." The takeaway: More than 200 new craters popped up on the moon over the past seven years – a third more than expected.

What to read?

Non-US shoppers

Featured Post: A Milestone

On October 16, 2007, Fleet of Worlds was first published. That is: ten years ago to the day. Larry and Ed at 2015 Nebula weekend This...

Energized (Newly reissued!)

"A taut near-future thriller about an energy-starved Earth held hostage by a power-mad international cartel … Lerner’s vision of the future is both topical and possible in this crisp, fast-paced hard SF adventure.” —Publishers Weekly

Dark Secret (my latest)

"I heartily recommend Ed Lerner's Dark Secret" — Tangent Online

InterstellarNet: Enigma (I-Net #3)

"One of the most rewarding SF reading experiences anyone could ask for, on both an intellectual and emotional level." — Tangent Online

InterstellarNet: Origins (I-Net #1)

"One of the most original, believable, thoroughly thought-out, and utterly fascinating visions ever of what interstellar contact might really be like."— Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog

A Time Foreclosed

"A nice little foray into the paradoxes of time travel" — SFRevu

Fate of Worlds (FOW #5)

“Brings to a stunning close a multivolume saga that has captured the imaginations of a multitude of readers … a story that will attract attention from series fans as well as readers of hard sf.” — Library Journal

Juggler of Worlds (FoW #2)

“A snazzy thriller/mystery that keeps us (and our hero) guessing until the very end ... Wide screen galactic scope, nifty super-science, crafty aliens, corporate corruption and cover ups, and a multi-leveled spy vs. spy vs. spy mystery with little being as it first appears make Juggler of Worlds a first class exemplar of pure SF entertainment.” —SFsite

Fleet of Worlds (FoW #1)

" ... Needs recommending within the science fiction community about as much as a new Harry Potter novel does – well, anywhere." —Locus

ARMAGEDDON / PARADISE -- two books in one

"A romp through time and history ... an intriguing selection." — Bookloons

Small Miracles

"Suspense and action enough to fuel any thriller, and even to drive it to the big screen." —SFrevu

Fools' Experiments

“When the artificial intelligences ... go maverick, they turn out to be the true weapons of mass destruction. A fast, fun read.” — Sci Fi Weekly

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About Me

I'm a physicist and computer scientist (and an MBA, of less relevance to most of these posts). After thirty years in industry, as everything from individual technical contributor to senior vice president, I now write full-time. Mostly I write science fiction and techno-thrillers, now and again throwing in a straight science or technology article.